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00:00In this room, we have a lot of World War II items.
00:07This is where some of the Hitler items are housed.
00:10This is Hitler's tea set.
00:13A lot of American soldiers sourced very unusual artifacts.
00:17We have some Eva Braun items down there.
00:20We have a Hitler shirt.
00:23Can you show me the swatch?
00:27This is the swatch, and this is the blood stain.
00:32That whole little corner here is all Hitler's blood.
00:36The American soldier just took out a knife, cut a piece off,
00:39put it in his pocket, and off he went.
00:41He didn't think a lot about it.
00:42He didn't think 80 years later
00:44people were going to try to extract DNA off of it.
00:48Responsible for some of humanity's worst atrocities,
00:58Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied people in history.
01:02But despite this, he remains an enigma.
01:05Because he's so guarded about his own personal history,
01:09there remain questions that continue to puzzle historians.
01:13His ancestry is shrouded in mystery.
01:16Hitler appears to have felt shamed about his family.
01:19There's been this rumor for a really long time
01:22that Hitler had Jewish ancestry through his grandfather.
01:26His psychological state is hotly debated.
01:29There's a very long history of trying to diagnose Hitler,
01:33who is one of the most enigmatic figures who ever lived.
01:37Some have denied that he had any illness at all.
01:40I have always argued that there's good medical evidence to the contrary.
01:44His sex life is a secret he took to his grave.
01:47He didn't seem to have the same libido men of his age would have had.
01:52And he remains the subject of persistent rumors about his health.
01:56Hitler felt uncomfortable in his own body.
01:59He didn't want to undress in front of anyone ever.
02:02Now, 80 years since his death, can science provide answers?
02:09Looks like a real solid sample.
02:11Can a blood-stained piece of fabric unlock the secrets contained in Hitler's DNA?
02:17We've found something really interesting.
02:22When these findings emerged, I was simply flabbergasted.
02:27Can we finally understand history's most notorious tyrant?
02:44This was how Adolf Hitler wanted to be seen in the 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will.
02:52This was a documentary film commissioned by Hitler himself.
02:58This is the staging of Hitler as a messiah.
03:02As the chosen one.
03:04As the person who's descending from heaven to earth in order to save Germany.
03:11It's natural for people to want a savior.
03:14And Hitler presented himself as the messiah.
03:17He was the man who had the answers.
03:20He was the man who had the answers.
03:22Apparently, Hitler, the vérité!
03:24To the world and thejĂ ì ìë that came to Hitler!
03:25He was the greatest rise of the world and that he
03:31Who feels like a leader of the best blood, and has this knowledge of the nation's leadership
03:46and has decided to keep this leadership, make it clear, and not give it away!
03:53Promising to create a National Socialist Reich that would last a thousand years, Hitler led Germany into its darkest chapter.
04:15By April 1945, the Thousand Year Reich was in ruins.
04:23His Nazi regime was collapsing, and the FĂŒhrer himself was a physical and mental wreck.
04:32Hitler is increasingly faced with the question, what will his fate be?
04:40He decides, before the Soviets take Berlin, to take his own life.
04:47As the Third Reich crumbled, Hitler's personal valet, Heinz Linger, bore witness to the tyrant's final moments.
04:59Mr. Linger, is Hitler really dead?
05:03Yes. I was the last one who said goodbye to him, and the first, after his suicide, to enter the room in the bunker.
05:13And how did he kill himself?
05:17He shot himself, and Eva Braun took poison.
05:23Hitler was determined that his most intimate secrets would die with him.
05:28He gave me the order, five days before, to get gasoline to burn the bodies.
05:36We burned them in the garden.
05:39Hitler made sure that his body would be destroyed so that there would be no traces left that would contradict the artificial version of himself that had been created.
05:55But while his body was destroyed, Hitler left something behind that at the time would have seemed inconsequential.
06:10His blood.
06:13Now an international team of experts will test the DNA in this bloodstained swatch.
06:18And if it does belong to Hitler, they will attempt a world first.
06:26To sequence his genome.
06:33I am a geneticist who specializes in ancient and forensic DNA.
06:37I am probably best known for having led the genetic and statistical identification of the remains of King Richard III,
06:44who was found in a car park in Leicester in 2012.
06:49I am a historian of Nazi Germany, based in the University of Potsdam.
06:55We already have historical documentation about Hitler.
07:00But we don't have something like this is DNA.
07:03This will change the way we think about Hitler, add to our understanding of him,
07:09and be something that we will be talking about for a long time to come.
07:12I think this is going to be a really interesting and potentially difficult case.
07:23I often collaborate with people in Germany, and they would not touch this.
07:28Anyone we went to in Europe wouldn't touch it.
07:31That gives us some idea of the shadow that Hitler still casts over Europe.
07:36So we have to tread very carefully.
07:39I really agonized about whether or not I wanted to be involved.
07:45And that's because of who it is.
07:47But it's also an extremely interesting project because of who he is.
07:51There's been huge amounts of interest in his mental health.
07:58And we know that there's a genetic component to psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.
08:04But we know it's also about environment and upbringing and so on.
08:09No matter what we find, that would never excuse anything that Hitler did.
08:17People with psychiatric disorders do not go on to do the sorts of things that Hitler did.
08:24My concern is that by not approaching this, it makes him and DNA almost like a taboo.
08:35And I think that's wrong.
08:38We need to demystify what we can and cannot tell from somebody's DNA.
08:4380 years of scientific breakthroughs have transformed our understanding of human genetics.
08:53The famous helix structure of DNA was identified soon after the end of World War II.
08:58Over the decades that followed, research progressed into its uses, particularly in forensics.
09:06And at the dawn of the 21st century, the Human Genome Project made a major breakthrough.
09:12We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome.
09:18With the power of this discovery comes, of course, the responsibility to use it wisely.
09:23Our individual genomes contain countless clues.
09:28To our propensity for physical features and disease.
09:32For psychiatric and neurodevelopmental traits.
09:36And to our ancestry.
09:39And because DNA remains long after we die, geneticists can now shine new light on figures from history.
09:45So in terms of doing genetic analysis like this, provenance, understanding where the sample has come from is key.
09:58So does the sample said to be from Adolf Hitler's sofa stand up to scrutiny?
10:03The grandson of the American soldier who cut the swatch from the sofa has been traced to Italy.
10:14So Eric, this swatch that we are trying to get DNA out of was from your grandfather.
10:20He was the one who got it.
10:22My grandfather was the information officer under General Eisenhower during the war.
10:26And so he had access to people in places that very few people had.
10:33When the Allied forces came together in Berlin, he was there.
10:37And he would have been, I believe, in the first group of Americans that entered Hitler's bunker.
10:41I don't know how long after Hitler killed himself that visit would have occurred.
10:52The bodies were gone, but there was blood on the sofa.
10:58My grandfather cut the swatch of blood.
11:03It's such a powerful memento.
11:08For him, it was a true symbol of the death of Hitler in the end of the war.
11:14Eighty years later, we're sitting across the table from one another, talking about the possibility of getting DNA.
11:22You know, good on you, Granddad.
11:24It seems that the swatch itself came from Hitler's bunker.
11:35But does the blood on the fabric belong to Hitler himself?
11:40To find out, a forensic geneticist will collect a sample.
11:44We like to call ourselves the island of misfit cases, where all the most difficult things go when they're stuck.
11:51So over here is the swatch, and right there is the blood.
11:55Excellent, yeah, you can definitely see the discoloration.
11:57Yeah.
11:59I've done a lot of sampling in my life, but this one brought me some anxiety. I'm not going to even lie about it.
12:08Yeah, classic dead red-brown staining. It looks like a real solid sample.
12:17When you're working on something with historical relevance, it's a destructive process.
12:25You want to take a sample that is likely to give you some information, but with every kind of increase in size of that, you're destroying more and more of the original object.
12:35I'm going to take just a small little... about that. Is that okay?
12:41Yeah.
12:43When the handle is something this historic, you know, when you see it happen, it's definitely stressful.
12:50What we need is going to vary on the sample type, how diluted it was, how old it was, just making sure that everything's sealed. We don't want anything to get in or get out.
13:03You can certainly tell that you had a blood stain there, it's just how much is that impacted by the age.
13:11You're talking about a very small sample. In theory, everything will work out just fine, but until you get in the lab, you just don't know.
13:20So is it really Hitler's blood? And if it is, will the DNA reveal anything after degrading for 80 years?
13:31A swatch of blood stained fabric cut from a sofa in 1945 has been taken for analysis to determine if it is Adolf Hitler's blood.
13:49What we're desperate to know is whether or not we've got enough DNA that we can even do the analysis, because without that, that's the end of the project.
14:06After multiple rejections from European institutions, uncomfortable testing anything associated with Hitler,
14:13an American forensics lab will work on identifying any DNA in the sample taken from the museum.
14:22We have had samples much older than 80 years that we've tested and been able to obtain really good results from.
14:29But at the same time, if it is not kept well, we have samples five or six years old that are so degraded that it is very difficult to get usable information from.
14:43So our extraction process begins with adding specific chemicals that reveal DNA from deep within the nucleus.
14:55We want DNA in water and that's it.
15:00So far this looks like a sample that could have some blood on it.
15:03It's more red than the fabric is.
15:07My gut feeling is that there's something there, that it's not just an empty piece of fabric.
15:15It's ready to go on our instrument.
15:18So this will tell us how much DNA is present in our sample.
15:21Your first steps are doing the DNA extraction and then you want to determine is this human blood and is it from a male.
15:33It is one of the most nerve-wracking parts of this process.
15:36So results are there is human DNA, it appears to be male.
15:52Degradation shows that it has failed, which is expected.
15:55We expect DNA from 80 years ago to be degraded, so that is a good sign that this is very likely the DNA that you're expecting it to be and not some new and fresh contaminant.
16:09So the initial findings seem positive. The sample is blood, it is from a man, and the DNA is not recent.
16:22But how can genetics confirm it to be Hitler's blood?
16:26So the piece of DNA that we use to do the identification that this is Hitler is the Y chromosome.
16:32We humans, we have got 23 pairs of chromosomes.
16:36You get one half of each pair comes from mom and the other half comes from dad.
16:41Chromosome pairs number 1 to 22, they're the same between men and women and they're known as our autosomes.
16:48But we've got chromosome pair number 23 here, those are known as our sex chromosomes.
16:53So women have got two copies of this rather large X chromosome.
16:59Men have got an X chromosome but they've also got this tiny little Y chromosome.
17:04But it's going to be really important for this project because the Y chromosome that a man has, it comes down to him down through the male line.
17:13So if we can find a male line relative of Hitler and look at their Y chromosome type, we can see if it matches that from the DNA from the sample.
17:22In Belgium, journalist Jean-Paul Mulders has spent years tracking down Hitler's blood relations.
17:36About 15 years ago, I read that strange story of a man who during the 70s claimed to be Hitler's son.
17:45My initial thoughts was this must be bullshit in fact.
17:57People lie, but DNA doesn't. I had to find out whether it was true or not.
18:06Using stamps licked by Hitler's supposed son, Jean-Paul obtained a DNA sample.
18:11Having the DNA of Lorette is one thing, obtaining the DNA of Hitler's relatives is another one.
18:20Working with a genealogist, Jean-Paul began to identify living male relatives of Hitler.
18:27You cannot contact them. If you call them by phone, they simply do not answer.
18:34So I started to visit relatives of Hitler in Austria and ask them for a DNA sample.
18:41Some of them react aggressive and said, I don't want to have anything to do with this.
18:47I thought at that moment it won't succeed. We are here for nothing and we will go back with empty hands.
18:55We visited one more relative of Hitler. He was very friendly and he said, oh, a bit of saliva. Is that all you want?
19:04He took the swab and put it in his mouth and gave it back.
19:08Here you are, have a nice day. And it was a nice day because I had the DNA of the relative.
19:13The results were crystal clear. It didn't match with the saliva on the stamps belonging to Jean-Marie Lorette.
19:23So Jean-Marie Lorette was not at all the son of Adolf Hitler.
19:28Now, many years later, this sample provides a definitive way to test whether the blood from the sofa is in fact Hitler's.
19:37So let me show you the Y chromosome results.
19:45This is the male line relative from JP Mulder's sample.
19:50And then let's bring you the one in from the swatch.
19:54Look at that.
19:56There's an exact match between the male line relative and the DNA from the sample from the swatch.
20:03They're identical. So does that mean that the blood sample really does belong to Hitler?
20:10This is a really important moment in any investigation like this.
20:16You know what, Alex? It looks like we've got Adolf Hitler's DNA.
20:22When you can kind of go, yep, it's him.
20:26We've got him.
20:27I'm so pleased with the result. I feel like we can go forward with confidence, really.
20:33For the first time in history, Adolf Hitler's DNA has been identified.
20:39The question now, is there enough DNA left after 80 years to reveal anything useful about history's most studied man?
20:48Whilst we're alive, we have got really nice long strands of DNA and we can sequence modern DNA incredibly easily.
21:01After death, our DNA starts to degrade. It starts to be cut into smaller and smaller fragments until eventually there is nothing left to sequence.
21:12Can DNA offer answers where historians have so far failed?
21:19And will this groundbreaking evidence reveal what Hitler was so keen to hide?
21:24After several rounds of sequencing, the Hitler DNA sample has been rebuilt into this.
21:43A reconstruction of the whole genome of history's most enigmatic tyrant.
21:48So, this is it. This is Adolf Hitler's genome.
21:57So, this reconstruction is an incredible achievement. How close do you think it is to the entire thing?
22:05We have got some gaps, but we've managed to get pretty good coverage for the genome, so I'm as happy as we can be.
22:11And we can start to get information about his health.
22:16You cannot see evil in somebody's DNA, but you can say things about whether or not they are genetically predisposed towards certain conditions.
22:25We're looking for something about Hitler's ancestry and we're looking for mutations in his DNA, insertions, deletions.
22:36It brings a completely new slant, a new angle on someone who was responsible for the most terrible crimes committed in modern history.
22:44It's really an irony that Hitler, who had his own body destroyed, did not manage to conceal his DNA.
22:54And that now, in the 21st century, we can try to recover some of the secrets that Hitler wanted to conceal himself.
23:03So, how does this new genetic information interact with what we already know?
23:10Can the genome shine new light on the dimmest reaches of the Hitler story, his early life?
23:16Hitler was born in a place called Braunau am Inn, on the border of Germany and Austria.
23:26He wrote in his memoir slash manifesto, Mein Kampf, that this was fate, that it was his destiny to unite these two nations, Austria and Germany.
23:39He famously started Mein Kampf with this sanitized version of his childhood, while in reality, he really had a lot of adverse life experiences.
23:54He was surrounded by death from an early age, when he was 13 years old. His father died, and at the age of 18, his mother died.
24:04Hitler's mother, Clara, had to bury not one, not two, but four of her children, who died at very, very young ages from diphtheria.
24:17Adolf and his younger sister, Paula, were literally the only two survivors.
24:22Combined with that, his father, Alois Hitler, was a very physically violent alcoholic, and he beat Adolf.
24:35Alois took every opportunity to exert his authority relentlessly on the young Adolf.
24:43We don't want to say anyone who's been abused or anyone who's experienced neglect in their early life is going to end up doing terrible things.
24:53That's not the case. But these early adverse life experiences do play a critical role.
25:00Hate often does come from this sense of feeling angry, feeling badly treated, feeling alienated from society, maybe as a result of early negative experiences.
25:17This is the former village of Dollersheim in Lower Austria, where generations of Hitler's ancestors lived and died.
25:32Today, almost nothing remains.
25:34We're here in what is left of Dollersheim, which, as you can see, is now a military training area, but up until 1938 was a thriving community.
25:49One of the descendants of this community is Bernhard Lehr.
25:53Im Juni 1938 wurde das Waldviertel gerÀumt. Die Leute mussten alles liegen und stehen lassen, hatten die Aufgabe, sich andere Immobilien und HÀuser zu suchen.
26:08Von hier stammt zum Beispiel mein Vater ab und darum bin ich mit dieser Geschichte vertraut geworden.
26:16Die Ortschaft hatte GasthÀuser, GeschÀfte, Landwirte, sogar ein Arzt, sogar ein Zahnarzt lebte in Dollersheim.
26:29Davon ist kaum was noch ĂŒbrig.
26:33Die Natur hat es rĂŒckerobert, kann man sagen.
26:38Despite its importance in hitlers family story, the German Army was ordered to forcibly resettle all 2000 villagers, before bombing their homes as part of training exercises.
26:51is
26:55so what militaires knew about this area that one can use it for the manoeuvre
27:03there were in the 1930s journalists who wanted to show that Hitler maybe
27:09to a part of the Jewish people came from the Jewish population
27:15we don't know it
27:17could it be that Hitler was trying to destroy evidence around his true ancestry
27:39so where does this rumor come from that Hitler had Jewish ancestry
27:43it's been around for a very long time since the late 1920s early 1930s
27:47that Hitler's grandmother Maria Schickelgruber had worked for a period of time in a Jewish household
27:53and had got pregnant
27:55foreign media got hold of this made a big thing out of it
27:59and Hitler was clearly quite concerned about the potential damage it would do
28:03and therefore he took steps to publish an official version of his family tree
28:09which made clear that there was no Jewish ancestry
28:13can Hitler's DNA shed light on the ancestry of his grandfather
28:17this is where the Y chromosome data actually backs up
28:21that Nazi version
28:23of his family tree
28:25because the Y chromosome is showing that Hitler
28:27is indeed Hitler or he wouldn't get that
28:29DNA match with the male line relative
28:31if he had Jewish ancestry
28:33that match wouldn't be there
28:35so we can actually put that rumor
28:37about Jewish ancestry to bed based on the DNA
28:39exactly now we know for certain
28:41DNA has answered one of the biggest questions about Hitler's ancestry
28:47but can it offer new insights into why he may have behaved as he did
28:53about 20 years ago
28:55I studied Hitler's life
28:57there's a vast amount of information available
29:01that was collected
29:03and I was absolutely convinced
29:05at that time that he had
29:07a whole variety of neurodevelopmental conditions
29:11and I published on this
29:13many people obviously challenged me
29:15they didn't like it
29:17they disagreed with it
29:19so are there any clues
29:21as to whether he was affected by any conditions
29:23and if so
29:25what they might have been
29:31this is Linz
29:33Austria's third city
29:35the only thing that Hitler had to a hometown
29:43this is a plaque that commemorates
29:45that this hotel
29:47was once a school
29:49and that one of its most famous
29:51school children was the philosopher
29:53Ludwig Wittgenstein
29:55however this plaque fails to mention
29:57the other most famous
29:59school child to attend this school
30:01Adolf Hitler
30:03Hitler
30:05Hitler had dreams
30:07of being an artist
30:09and he talks about this from something like
30:11the age of 12
30:13he said his father was absolutely adamant
30:15that this would not be the case
30:17as a school pupil
30:19he was quite
30:21idle and lazy
30:23he didn't make any effort
30:25in school
30:27he didn't concentrate
30:29he didn't do his homework
30:31he was unteachable
30:33nobody could tell him anything
30:35so whilst he was quite intelligent
30:37and clever
30:39if the subject didn't interest him
30:41he just entirely neglected it
30:43was Hitler just an unhappy
30:45absent-minded child
30:47or does his DNA indicate something
30:49more fundamental
30:51that might help explain his behaviour
30:55Hitler's DNA results
30:57have been sent to a world leading team
30:59at Aarhus University
31:01to assess his genetic propensity
31:03for psychiatric
31:05and neurodevelopmental conditions
31:07we are doing genetic analysis
31:09where we are looking at
31:11thousands of individuals
31:13with a psychiatric condition
31:15by using something called
31:17the polygenic score
31:19a polygenic score
31:21assesses an individual's genetic markers
31:23for a certain condition or disease
31:25it compares these
31:27with a large population sample
31:29to chart the individual's relative likelihood
31:31of developing the condition
31:33we were very surprised
31:37when we saw that he was
31:39such an outlier
31:41on several conditions
31:43we found that actually
31:45very astonishing
31:49so we have been looking at his score
31:51for childhood neurodevelopmental
31:53onset conditions
31:55we can maybe start with the score
31:57for ADHD
31:59so what you can see here is
32:01the distribution of the score
32:03you can see you have this bell curve
32:05and in the middle you have a lot of individuals
32:07with an average score
32:09and then you can also see for ADHD
32:11he is towards the end
32:13so he has a score that is higher
32:15than the average
32:17with common variants
32:19that associates with ADHD
32:21or increases the risk for ADHD
32:23Hitler's possible genetic propensity for ADHD
32:27seems to be reflected
32:29of his poor performance at school
32:31but what about evidence
32:33from his adolescence
32:35as his personality became more clearly formed
32:37with ADHD
32:39that those people are usually described
32:43as being lazy
32:45but it's a question of interest
32:47when the person with ADHD
32:49focus on something of interest
32:51then they have the capacity
32:53to hyper focus
32:55that profile does fit
32:57with Hitler
32:59particularly in school
33:01and indeed
33:03you can find evidence of ADHD
33:05throughout his life
33:07he was hyperactive
33:08he was impulsive
33:09he was always on the go
33:11you can see how disastrous
33:12the management of the war
33:13would be for somebody
33:15who had ADHD
33:16like Hitler
33:25Seek violence!
33:27Seek violence!
33:29Seek violence!
33:30Seek violence!
33:31Evidence of Adolf Hitler's behaviour
33:33before his reinvention
33:35as the Nazi demagogue
33:37is relatively scarce
33:39But August Kubitschek's account
33:41of his teenage friendship with Hitler
33:43is an invaluable source
33:45for psychiatrists
33:46interested in the dictator's state of mind
33:49The benefit of the Kubitschek memoirs
33:51is that they were the only source
33:53about Hitler
33:54in his childhood and teenage years
33:57and a very good source
33:58in the sense that
33:59Kubitschek himself
34:00was not politically active
34:01Kubitschek and Hitler's first encounter
34:07was here at the Municipal Theatre
34:10where the two of them
34:11discovered their shared love
34:12of music and the opera
34:20He was a remarkably pale, skinny youth
34:22about my own age
34:24who was following the performance
34:25with glistening eyes
34:26Once after the performance
34:29I accompanied him home
34:30when we took leave of each other
34:32he gave me his name
34:34Adolf Hitler
34:38Hitler and Kubitschek's
34:39mutual passion for music
34:41created a strong bond
34:43and they became close friends
34:45He was totally obsessed with opera
34:48He spoke to his friend August
34:50endlessly about opera
34:54But Hitler was very controlling
34:57and dominating
34:59He would talk in monologues
35:01He would arrange his friend
35:03It was a genuine friendship
35:06but the only one in his life
35:09He was always convinced that he was right
35:13He would talk for hours
35:15heatedly, passionately
35:17often violently
35:18and I would listen
35:19completely under his spell
35:21Hitler clearly struggled with social relationships
35:27Can this be explained simply by the higher than average likelihood of ADHD found in his genome?
35:34For a lot of neurodevelopmental disorders
35:37we see very often
35:39that if you have one condition
35:41there's a high probability of also having another condition
35:45So we have also been looking at Hitler's score for autism
35:50If we look here at the distribution of autism in the population
35:55you can see that Hitler is really, really lying high at the right end
36:01He has a very high score
36:03and he actually belongs to the top 1%
36:07Top 1%?
36:09This suggests that, I would say, quite a high probability
36:13that he might have had some autistic behaviours or symptoms of autism
36:19What's really interesting seeing these high polygenic scores
36:24is that people were already speculating about whether or not he had these conditions
36:30They're really striking results
36:33I can hardly express how staggered I was
36:36to find support for my findings from genetics
36:41because I had taken quite a lot of criticism
36:44for describing Hitler as having autism
36:48for ADHD
36:50and for other things
36:52We can't reduce his behaviour to these diagnoses
36:57Autism is a disability
37:02and a difference
37:04It's a disability in the sense that
37:06people who are autistic
37:08struggle with social relationships and communication
37:12They struggle with that first kind of empathy
37:14We call it cognitive empathy
37:16which is just the ability to recognise
37:19what someone is thinking or feeling
37:21Autistic people have excellent attention to detail
37:25and excellent pattern recognition skills
37:29and they tend to kind of focus on particular topics
37:33sometimes called obsessions
37:35so they go into great depth
37:37in a very systematic way
37:43Long before politics
37:45Hitler's obsessions were music and art
37:48and in 1907
37:50he moved to Vienna
37:51to pursue his dream of becoming a painter
37:54He'd already left school
37:57He'd given up on everything in his life
38:00to that point
38:01and only had this one idea in mind
38:04which is taking the entrance exam
38:06for the Academy of Fine Arts
38:08This status was quite important for him
38:11Hitler seemed to have been obsessed with being an artist
38:17He really believed he was good enough
38:19so he was always very passionate about that
38:22but it seemed that it was not his actual calling
38:25Hitler had invested all his hopes into entering the Vienna Academy
38:31but he was rejected twice
38:34He spent the next few years drifting in Vienna
38:38eking out a living selling paintings in the street
38:49A major change of fortune came with the outbreak of the First World War
38:54So how did the move to military life suit Hitler's possible autistic traits?
39:011914 was one of several turning points in Hitler's life
39:06The First World War gave him a new opportunity to find employment
39:12to find meaning when all his dreams of becoming an artist had actually been dashed
39:19Hitler left Austria and moved to the Bavarian capital of Munich in Germany
39:26When the announcement of war was made in Munich
39:29Hitler claims he was there that day
39:31and he joined up with the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment
39:36At that point he is willing to follow orders
39:42in function in this very structured hierarchical way
39:47where other people tell him what his boundaries are
39:50and what he can do within those boundaries
39:54Hitler thrived in the army
39:56He won an iron cross for bravery
39:59and was promoted to the rank of corporal
40:02Hitler's entrance into the army is absolutely fascinating
40:06because he found a structure there
40:09Another feature of autism is what we call preservation of sameness
40:14wanting routine
40:16wanting the same routine every day
40:22He didn't have friends in the army
40:24He didn't relate to the other soldiers
40:26If you ever look at a photograph of Hitler in the army
40:29he's always at a side
40:34Germany was at the mercy of the Allies
40:36We celebrated not only because the war was over
40:41but because it seemed that we had put an end to German militarism forever
40:46After the war Hitler returned to Munich
40:49In the chaos it had become a hotbed of revolutionary activity
40:53on the left and right of politics
40:55Hitler worked for the army as an informant
40:59sent to monitor the activities of extreme parties
41:03He was soon drawn to the right-wing nationalist views of one group in particular
41:09The NSDAP
41:11which became known as the Nazi Party
41:17It's not uncommon for a person with autism
41:20to have very black and white thinking
41:23This black and white thinking makes people vulnerable
41:27to join extreme groups
41:29and of course Hitler did that
41:33Of course in the general population
41:35the vast majority of autistic people are highly moral
41:38They're excessively moral
41:40Now that's totally different from Hitler
41:43who was amoral and perverse
41:46The first fellow who heard him speak in a beer keller in Munich
41:51he said
41:52what a gob he has
41:54we could use him
41:56and because of that
41:57he was made their leader
42:01Hitler's genetic propensity for autistic and ADHD traits
42:05does seem to align with what we know from history
42:10Could these findings help explain Hitler's behaviour in later life?
42:16At Trinity College, Cambridge
42:18a leading autism expert
42:19will assess his polygenic scores
42:24Simon, this is the one for autism
42:27So he's in the top 1% for autism on the polygenic score
42:32Yeah
42:33We've got another polygenic score around ADHD
42:36and he's coming at the 80th percentile
42:38Yeah, it is amazing how the scientists have managed to extract
42:42these scores from the DNA
42:45but the process of science is all about critical review
42:49and scrutiny
42:50going from biology to behaviour is a big jump
42:54It's an indication of a predisposition
42:58but it's not a diagnosis
43:00Yeah, by looking at genetic results like this
43:03there's a risk of stigma
43:05people out there might feel
43:07is my diagnosis being linked with somebody who did such monstrous things
43:13The vast majority of these individuals do not do bad things
43:16We've just got to keep that in mind
43:18Completely
43:19So that it doesn't become out of balance
43:21Hmm
43:22It would be very easy for people to look at this result
43:24and say was the whole of Hitler's behaviour to do with autism
43:30Exactly
43:31And I think that would be the wrong conclusion to draw
43:34The risk is reductionism down to genetics
43:37when there are so many other factors that could be playing a part
43:40We know that genes don't operate in isolation
43:43They operate in an environment
43:45And I'm glad that Alex is here as the historian
43:48to just remind us about the importance of social factors
43:51Yeah
43:52He clearly experienced an unusual level of suffering during his childhood
43:58Yeah, loss, yeah
43:59And loss
44:00To me, the experience of neglect and abuse
44:03would be much more relevant to understanding
44:06why somebody grows up with hate and anger
44:08rather than the genetics
44:11The two interplay
44:14And in Hitler's case, autism and ADHD
44:17cannot explain his cruelty in later life
44:20But perhaps one other polygenic finding from his DNA can
44:25Genetic tests have also shown that Hitler's polygenic score for antisocial behaviour
44:31a measure of psychopathy
44:33is in the top 10%
44:37I think that we're quite entitled to use criminal autistic psychopathy
44:42to describe Hitler
44:44It highlights, number one, his criminality
44:47Number two, his autism
44:49And number three, his psychopathy
44:52So it's a very complex mixture
44:55Hitler is one in a million
44:56or maybe one in a billion
45:00The shy, unusual boy
45:02who failed at everything he had strived for
45:05had put his unique mind
45:07to reinventing himself as a messianic leader
45:10inspiring God-like devotion
45:13But strip away the theatrics
45:16and Hitler was still a man
45:18No amount of power
45:20could help him to overcome the limits of his body
45:25And when the scientists explore what Hitler's DNA might reveal about his physique
45:29something truly extraordinary is exposed
45:34We've had some results come back
45:37and there's something really, really interesting in it
45:43He's got a deletion for one letter of his DNA
45:48but that really affects the protein that is implicated in sexual development
45:55And development of sexual organs
45:58Really significant finding
46:00It seems this was manifested in his personal life
46:05in his personal relations
46:07He had throughout his life difficulty establishing intimate relationships
46:11Oh my goodness
46:13This is going to be quite big
46:15Could this finding help to answer one of the most persistent rumours around Hitler?
46:28And Hitler's DNA blueprint of a dictator concludes next Saturday slightly later at 5 past 9
46:34Gillian Anderson stars as a secret passion burns during the troubles
46:37Trespasses is streaming now
46:39And tensions simmer tomorrow in an atmospheric new drama
46:42Will secrets surface in summer water at 9
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